


A Trio of Seekers

by ImpureTale



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bast and Vala Survived AU, Gen, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-03-06 13:25:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18851974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpureTale/pseuds/ImpureTale
Summary: An idea I had about how the story might play out if Aloy did not go on her journey alone. Bast and Vala, alive after the Proving and owing a debt, agree to follow Aloy in her journey. Both are about to have everything they believe come into question. Vala, devout child of War Chief Sona, is learning to reconcile a culture she loves with its sometimes cruel policies -- what mother shuns their child, and why are the motherless outcast rather than adopted? Will what she learns alienate her from her tribe, or will she use her newfound knowledge to make the Nora better than they were? Bast, prejudiced and haughty, has much to learn about his changing place in the world. Doted upon and given every advantage by his Matriarch grandmother, he must leave the embrace, where he will confront the roots of his aggressive hatred for outcasts and decide whether the world he's known all his life is the one he means to stay in.





	1. Two Nora Braves

"Hey, Vala?"  
  
Vala shifted onto her side to look at Bast. The black shape of his face staring upward against the fire beyond him hid the discolorations, the abrasions, the swollen eye on the side she couldn't see. For just a second, she could almost forget this wasn't the night before the Proving anymore, and they were alone in the Longhouse not because so few had finished the race -- but because so few had survived. It was the look he had, though, even in the dark, that reminded her.  
  
Because he was so serious. Serious and without bravado. Without boastfulness or disdain. Just as he had been when the arrows began to fly. When so many of their friends fell down dead and it was just them and Aloy. When Vala called to him to join them, because they needed each other. Because they were all Nora, and their lands were once again under attack.  
  
She saw him cheat on the field in the Proving, shoot Aloy's trophy from her hands and run ahead. She would have come to blows with him then and there if the judge had sided with him in the end. Not even out of anger for losing, herself. Aloy had risked her life on the broken trail and beaten them -- even with everything set against her. She took the harder path and prevailed, and Vala had felt such a swell of pride for her new friend, even as her patience for Bast was finally wearing dangerously thin.  
  
When it mattered, he put it aside. He made no arguments. He learned that day that they were braves to do battle not with outcasts, but with something far more dangerous. The wilds. The outsiders. The killers.

He had not forgotten, it seemed, even in the two days to follow -- the avalanche that caught and trapped them when the mountaintop exploded, their recovery when their elder braves found them, even the news that Aloy had been taken into the womb of the Allmother by High Matriarch Teersa herself.  
  
A spark of light caught his eye as he glanced at her. "Do you know who that man was? The one who helped us escape." He was talking quieter than he had been earlier in the day; his hearing had come back fully, as the healers said it would.  
  
She shook her head. "He was running for Aloy when he left us, but I didn't recognize his mark." A breath. "Another outcast maybe. Someone she knew." She didn't want to suggest it; didn't want to invite Bast to remind anyone who could hear him that it would have been disrespect.  
  
A shock of shocks: he said nothing for a long while. Didn't glower. Didn't spit or boast. "We'd be dead if it weren't for them, wouldn't we?" he asked. "If we'd waited even a second longer to head down, we wouldn't have found cover when the rocks and snow started falling. If either of us had made a run for the rope when they brought out that weapon -- "  
  
"Hey." She pushed herself up and came to sit beside him. Her body wasn't sore anymore, just -- exhausted, like it was all her body could muster feeling for.  
  
Wincing, Bast shied away from the weight of her. Vala didn't let that deter her. It felt strange as she reached out to him, to be doing that to him -- not because he never seemed like he needed it, but because he'd sooner die than admit it. Matriarch Keiga's favored grandson, equally as proud and spiteful. _Give that boy your patience, girl, not your fist_ , her mother had told her when she was small. _He poultices his wounds with the only medicine a woman like that can teach him to wield._  
  
Vala's hand was careful with him, remembering the injuries that were dressed, the bruises that remained. A firm, soothing stroke.  
  
"That's not how it happened," she said, "and we're both here. And so are so many others, because the three of us stayed behind to fight and give them cover."  
  
He was still too stiff to really fully turn away from her or shrug her hand off. "The three of us," he echoed. With still-less disdain than she was expecting. Perhaps because the truth was not so easy to ignore.

The motherless girl had won the Proving, thus making herself a brave. Did this mean she was no longer motherless? If nothing else, she now belonged to Allmother.  
  
Aloy and the stranger had both ensured their survival.  
  
Bast was only alive because he'd agreed to let go of his hatred. Maybe he realized. Maybe he'd found new medicine. "She's in the mountain now," he mumbled. "Oma says it's blasphemy -- even if it were one of the two of us, it would be."  
  
Vala cut him off. He'd been doing so well. "We have to trust High Matriarch Teersa." Though she had no idea _why_ Teersa had done it, what it could mean.  
  
"Do you think she'll live?" he asked. "She was up there when the explosion -- "  
  
"I think we can't count her out just yet, as much as you'd like to."  
  
His whole body went tight, like the draw of a bow string. Vala withdrew her hand.  
  
"Tell me what you're thinking," she whispered. Because this beast in him needed to die before it made more trouble for them later. This grudge was for a child, not for a brave.  
  
Bast swallowed. "I hate this. If the killers hadn't come, we'd be two days into celebrating with all the new Braves. There would be hunting and feasting." He sniffed. "And -- "  
  
"And you still would have finished second to Aloy." Vala tried so hard not to sound disappointed. He didn't clarify -- his meaning had been plain, her shot true. "She did good, Bast. And if you hadn't shot the trophy from her hands, we'd have finished even further behind her." Or he would have gotten more desperate and wound up brawling with her right there on the trail while everyone else hurried past. "She earned it. By our laws. You have to let it go."  
  
"I can't!" he snapped, eyes wet and furious with anguish. "I don't know how else to be!"  
  
"The _devil_ you don't!" Vala stood over him, and when he curled away from her, she pressed forward. She could have throttled him right then. "If you really couldn't do better, you would have put an arrow in her when nobody would have seen you or stopped you! You know _exactly_ how to be, because you stood there with us and you fought the enemy! The ones who killed all our friends! The ones _my family_ is out there hunting right now!"  
  
Whom she may have already lost her mother to. She hadn't waited. When Vala didn't come down the mountain before the blast, she and her war party were in pursuit. Did Bast think Vala enjoyed waiting here to heal when all she wanted to do was find Sona and tell her that she was alive?  
  
Movement outside the longhouse, the posted guards likely hearing them inside, though they didn't come to investigate. When she turned back to look at him, Bast was shaking, a few sobbing sounds breaking through. Pity and annoyance brought her back to sitting, now across from him.  
  
"Fine," she continued, now with less bite. "She was an outcast. _Was._ We don't talk to them. We don't give them things. But we don't attack them. We don't _throw rocks_ at them. We don't deny them _anything_ that is their right by law. So why, Bast? I know you were a child then; we both were. Why did you do something that could very well have made _you_ an outcast, if you'd done it to any of the rest of us?"  
  
"It doesn't matter," he said, wiping his eyes with the back of his arm. "Because you're right. The killers are what's important right now. When I'm better, I want to find them. I want to know why they did this and make them pay."  
  
"I won't fault you there." Not for the first time. She settled back down on her bed. "But it does matter, because when Aloy gets better, she'll want to know, too."  
  
"If she gets better."  
  
" _When_ she gets better," Vala insisted, sitting up an inch just to telegraph she would come back over there if she had to. "When that happens, we're going with her, wherever she's headed."  
  
Though it obviously hurt him to do so, he rolled over to look fully at her finally. "Who fell out of your womb, had children, and made you a Matriarch?" he demanded.  
  
Vala did not reward his anger with anything but resolution in her voice. "We owe her a life debt, so when she wakes up, where she goes, we'll go."  
  
"Vala."  
  
She turned on her side away from him. "I'm going to petition the High Matriarchs tomorrow. And if you don't come with me, I'm going to tell them what you did before the attack at the Proving."  
  
Silence, pregnant with impotent rage. The sound of his fist coming down hard, twice, three times on the bedding.  
  
"Bast?"  
  
"I'm with you." Those same words. Final. Accepting.  _Tired._  "Let's just go to sleep."


	2. Law and Life Debts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Aloy confirmed a seeker, High Matriarch Lansra looks on as two braves come forward with a request.

Aloy was named and marked a Seeker.

Brandishing tradition and law as shields for herself and the Nora tribe entire, High Matriarch Lansra had hoped they would never be turned against her or her people. Teersa and Jezza would not see the danger that she saw in that girl, born without a mother inside the sacred mountain. Teersa was certain it was the All-mother herself that brought her forth. _No one who lives or dies is without a mother to birth them_ , Jezza had said, with all the dutiful reverence of a remembered hymn.

But a trick of the Metal Devil did not need to abide by natural laws. Had this not been made clear, when so few of their braves returned home safely?

A wince, kept to herself. In her heart, it felt wrong, even knowing the doom the devil sent with the girl, to blame her wholly. These killers were living men with their own evil purposes, however the devil had put them to work, and they threatened her as well.

As far as they could see. Lansra did not trust, and the less she knew, the less safe it all felt. The Hymn of Atonement would be the only thing that could ease them as they fortified and rebuilt.

"High Matriarchs!"

Vala and Bast, heroes of the Proving, found alive just a little more than a day ago, emerged from the crowd grimfaced and a little worse for wear, but whole. Querants fell silent in their passing.  
Lansra did not fail to note Aloy's reaction, part of her still hoping to read some treachery from her, wishing her eyes would see past the veil cast over them, that told her those were tears welling in her eyes, a smile, however anguished, on her lips.

"You're alive." Whispered. Relieved. Certain.

Vala's eyes held a smile that a sterner face would not allow to touch her lips, not as she addressed her chieftains. "We humbly request that you send us with Aloy," she said.

Even the motherless girl, now Seeker, was taken aback.

With his grandmother's confidence and presence on his best days, Lansra saw Bast no less steadfast now, though his countenance wore the same frustration the High Matriarch could feel in her own. He did not contradict his companion.

Teersa, always quick to act without consulting her fellows, was for once blessedly stumped in her immediate response, and Lansra was able to find her voice first. "We cannot allow that. With our numbers depleted and War Chief Sona's party killed, we need all able-bodied braves to fortify here. War Chief Resh will have orders for you, surely."

Something in Vala's gaze went dark. "But you must." She was even-handed and dutiful, like her mother and older brother. For her to retort so sharply, so insistent and argumentative, drew a gasp even from the faithful present. "Without Aloy, we would not be alive or able-bodied at all." She glanced at Bast. Their arms touched.

Lansra hoped he would disagree. Instead, he squared his shoulders, swallowed, and spoke. Certain, but cold. "We owe a life debt, all of the new braves do. But we will shoulder it and carry on with her."

A sharp voice rose up from the crowd. "Bast, stop!"

Matriarch Keiga had nearly lost Bast in the Proving. Her first grandson, only child of her first and favored daughter, dead now nearly 13 years -- and the loss of her seemed to wring all gentleness and understanding from her that she did not reserve for Bast himself.

He had cousins who would be old enough to run the Proving in the next year. Within a few more, if her health won out and her family was fortunate and fruitful, she would be a High Matriarch herself. None of the current three looked to that with especial optimism. A staunch traditionalist her views split from Lansra's to an extreme outlier. No one even temporarily named an outcast could draw a respectful word from her lips, and no man who was not at least a brave had right to come to the tent of any of her daughters or granddaughters.

When word came of the murders of their young ones, no one cried with as much anguish as she, not until the beautiful pain of his recovery. She very nearly squeezed the life out of his unconscious body when he and Vala were found, whispers and sobs of gratitude climbing the sky to All-mother's ears. It was a level vulnerability she had not shown since Bast's mother fell into the fever-sleep and never woke again, and the lines of fret and trauma it drew across her face were still present now as she approached him.

It was hard even for Bast to see her this way. "Oma..."

"Take back what you said," she begged, reaching up with shaking arms to hold his face in her hands.

"I can't, Oma."

But she would not hear this. Could not hear this disobedience from him. "Your family needs you here, you must take it back!" Before he could object or acquiesce again, she sidestepped him to address the High Matriarchs, even Aloy who stood stunned at the scene before her, without yet a chance to get a word in edgewise. "High Matriarchs, please deny him!"

None would speak. By law, it was a Brave's right to declare a life debt.

Gentle Jezza flowed down to her like the riverbed that meets a stream, and as the realization grew in Keiga that none would contradict the two braves, she broke into sobs like her grandson was murdered anew, even as the chieftain embraced her.

She would only be soothed for but a moment. Last and desperate, she lifted her gaze to Aloy. "Tell him you don't want him!" she croaked, pain stealing all the forcefulness she might have used. "Say you do not need them! Release them and let them live!"

Bast did not move, though the clenching of his fists, the clenching of his jaw -- all these signs and more communicated enough: his desire to comfort a loved one, all his misgivings, but most of all his youth and his unwillingness to feel too much.

The motherless Seeker's face was deceptively sad, though peaceful. She looked to the two braves, who did not waver, only waited, then spoke to Teersa. "You will not stop them?"

Teersa, with reason: "It is not our right. Though Keiga is correct: you can tell them to stay if that is how you wish them to pay their debt to you."

Matriarch Keiga sucked in a breath. So many others as well, perhaps even the mountain herself.

Aloy would not let any other sound influence her. She looked only to Bast and Vala. "You really want this? I go beyond Nora land."

Vala did not hesitate. "Yes." Certain and devoted already to her goal, like a warrior now dead and buried who gave up his soul to avenge his daughter and the lives of many a Nora man, woman, and child lost to outlanders so many years ago.

"Bast?" Aloy spoke his name as though her tongue were a blade cutting it. "I won't be the one to make you if you truly don't wish to."

The beginnings of a glower. Whatever immediately gated his answer as he watched her and seemingly every face turned to him, it flew open when his gaze settled on Keiga, then Vala. "...I will go."

Though everything in her demeanor said she did not fully understand, the motherless girl seemed to need nothing else. "To find the source of the Corruption," she said, turning back to Teersa. "You know I am going where other Nora are forbidden. For them to follow me, they must be Seekers, too."

It was much to ask for. They'd rejected requests for seekership many times with far less reason than they had now. But in the case of a life debt, it was this, or let them become outcasts when they crossed out of Nora territory.

Aloy spared a look to each High Matriarch, and the moment her eyes met Lansra's felt reproachful. A threat, even when her words were nothing but appeasement. "I want them to be able to come home when this is over."

_But with what in tow?_ she thought.

There was nothing for it. Keiga's grief was so great that Lansra piteously wished wisdom would tell her to act any differently.

While Aloy's confirmation had been two to one, the vote was unanimous for Bast and Vala. No High Matriarch present could in good conscience acknowledge their intent and then send them into the wilds to be damned.

Three Seekers set out for the gate while the attendants gathered commenced the Hymn of Atonement. Matriarch Keiga, still collapsed in Jezza's arms, sang oh-so fervently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one might get some edits later just to flesh things out. I knew this scene needed to happen, but I knew I needed it to focus on a point of view that wasn't Vala or Bast -- Bast, especially. We'll get into more about his grandmother later, but I knew I couldn't do this scene from his POV, because he's probably the only one who won't see her the way others see her, and Vala's got some things bubbling underneath that won't really come out until the next chapter. I want it to build up just right!


	3. War Chief, Outcast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bast ruminates on his new lot in life as the trio trades gear, butts heads with the new War Chief, and encounters their first demon.

Aloy left them to say their goodbyes to friends and family, separating herself from the crowd to gather healing herbs on the mountaintop, and while there were familiar faces to leave behind, Bast was grateful that he could separate grief and worry from all the complicated emotions that girl was going to bring on him in the days to come.

Acceptance was not so hard to grasp as he let himself fear it would the night before. To hear her named Seeker by the High Matriarchs felt final. From their lips it was real, just as it had been from the judge at the end of the Proving (though only in that very moment, even if he would have denied forever if she had sided with him). He would never call her motherless again. He would never again deny that she was of the tribe. He told himself that now, as he and Vala were likewise anointed.

What he had yet to learn was how to feel, if not angry. Or confused, because in Oma's family, once Outcast, then always Outcast, and a returned Nora could have nothing but disdain. It was reflex to him much the same as averting your eyes from a sudden cut of sunshine. 

Though many a shower of rain had fallen on Mother's Watch and the Embrace -- and Bast had known all of them to be times to take shelter and stay dry, hunt with the added cover, or in his youthful exuberance, play in the puddles it made -- now the world seemed never so gray as it did now. With so many dead who did not deserve to be, Oma's weeping slicing through him like a knife, the embraces and too-somber well-wishes of his cousins and his aunts, he would have painted a more triumphant sky for them to set off to, had he the gift. (And had such a gift not been beneath the stature of a warrior, as Oma always taught him.)

Vala stayed with him to keep him moving forward, he knew, but her mood was still dark as he'd rarely known it. Silent, accepting of the kind words given her, trying to offer something approaching friendliness to their people, who only wanted them to do well and come home safe. Where he could manage a smile to reassure, to show he was still certain no more capable brave could have been chosen, she did not. 

It was what High Matriarch Lansra had said, he was certain. The night before, word had only been that War Chief Sona's party could not be found. To hear her say "dead" had been a shock, but Vala had not hesitated; in fact, it goaded her on in a way that he could only respect of her and her family. The loss of a mother, even the idea of it, cast such a wave of helplessness over him -- memories of a small child clasping at a hand, now cold, pleas for her to stay not unlike those that Oma spoke to him now. Don't leave me all alone, too. Mother's Heart had been so large and so loud and new and strange to him then, even when surrounded by people who said they were family. 

For Vala to take that same pain, to not shed one tear, and to carry forward? Even if he had not sworn to aid Aloy as a Seeker, he felt certain he would have followed Vala into the belly of the Metal Devil just to unravel the mystery of her -- to know whether that was strength or an unfeeling he had just never seen in her until now. 

Aloy met them again as they descended into Mother's Watch, her pack full, the spines of two bows strapped to her back along with her spear, and all manner of other pockets or devices where her limbs could carry them. She looked almost like a merchant, overflowing with goods. 

How they must have looked to her in the rain, for her to gaze at them so softly now -- did the rain look like tears to her? In the longhouse, she'd said she pitied him, and he laughed in her face, taking it for an outcast's poor attempt at seeming superior, a way to talk tough and mock. For all he wanted to fight her, fight this, he believed what she had said now. 

If he could not hate her for what she was, he could hate thinking he had been wrong about her, in more than one way. 

"Are you two ready?" she asked, her voice hedging. "Before we leave the Embrace -- " It sounded so final, even to her apparently. " -- There's someplace I need to show you first."

"We should discuss how we want to carry supplies first." ...Bast had expected Vala to say nothing, or to only agree, but apparently the amount of gear that Aloy had on her person had not been lost on her, no matter what shadow had fallen over her. "You're used to traveling alone, but that's not the case anymore." Almost a smile. Almost something reassuring. But Vala spoke to her in that same welcoming tone she had in her that first night. "So let's all share the load so we can all move faster."

Aloy looked almost abashed, and Bast felt it. To his credit, he'd never given thought to why she looked as she did. Hunting parties moved together and shared; a stealthy attack or expeditious retreat couldn't be had if you didn't help each other, and who did she have? Ever? Was that not the most dire punishment of being outcast, after all? 

"Not so sure I like that," she mused. 

"You're a Brave now," Vala reminded her. 

Finding a shaded area away from the falling rain, Aloy knelt to begin unloading herself. "...Are either of you good with stitching?"

"I do it fair enough." As though Bast had been left out of the conversation altogether, Vala answered and left him wondering if there would be an opening for a single word. But then she glanced back and caught his eye. "Bast's good at crafting traps, though, and fast about it, too." She nodded at him to come closer as she began to load up. "I've seen him lay down fresh explosives in the middle of a frenzying pack of scrappers, then roll out of the blast untouched." 

"Impressive." 

Bast felt his face burn hot as he knelt down to join them. It didn't matter if it was a compliment or meant only in sarcasm -- she was making more of an effort than he had thus far -- her and Vala both, really. 

Aloy separated out familiar supplies for him: blaze, metal vessels, and more, and he found room for them in his own pack. It was an uneasy truce even now; they both watched each other with semi-wary eyes, equally uncertain who would be the one to turn snide first. She asked him if he'd ever worked a tripcaster before, unstrapping and unfolding one from her leg to show to him -- when he admitted, quiet, that he had not, she shrugged it off. Plenty of time to learn while we travel. 

Helpful against larger machines, she said. Like he didn't know. He'd thought of rewarding himself with one after the Proving. 

Resolving that they would evenly divide shards, scrap, and other sellable items, they set off for the gate to the Watch, where they already heard whispers that the new War Chief had shuttered the doors for the safety of all. 

Even as the faithful sang atonement, there was fear that the enemy would pounce. 

He and Vala split off to gather a few last bits of supplies, but he was close enough to take note that Aloy was called close to the wall.

Teb was a stitcher of some renown, his fingers crafting some of the finest clothing and armor in the village, with his new designs for studded leather quickly becoming a light favorite among many Nora warriors. Oma turned her nose up at him but still traded shards for his work. "You don't need a needle in your hands, Bast," she'd said to him before, especially when he showed a knack for braiding, and even now he struggled to remember the garments made when he was a child, by hands she would later call suspiciously gentle. "It's not work for warriors to do." 

While he did not fight with her, he kept his less-than-negative opinions of the stitcher to himself. Oma could say all that she liked that it was a consolation, that Teb was too weak to finish his Proving and he had to make the best of his failure. 

But nobody created like that that wasn't born to do it. 

Bast's stomach turned on looking at Aloy again and the clothes she wore. In the longhouse, he chided that she'd poorly tried to dress like a real Nora. Now, all he could see were the telltale signs of Teb's work: his delicate, intricate stitching, the loving splashes of the Nora's beloved sky blue, the plush accents of raccoon pelt and goose feather. She'd come to her place in the vestments of the very best of their weavers, and Bast had called it the work of an amateur in the hopes of hurting her. 

He didn't know what he would do if she told Teb what he had said, but his fear was not realized as their conversation moved from talk of Sona (missing, to Teb, not dead, only possibly -- and if Vala heard in her gathering, she did not show it) to rumors of a demon among the machine herds in the Embrace. 

Now there was only to go through. He hoped as they approached the gate that they would hunt the demon; he had no real desire to meet one so soon after the Proving, but he thought of all his family up on the mountain praying and how few braves milled around the Watch now. Their quest had been decided, but surely this could be part of it, too. 

Resh was a familiar face to Bast, who laughed with him the night before the Proving as he spoke of his cherished memory of marking Aloy's face as a child -- and this reflected much of what they knew of each other in life. He shared enough in his disdain to look the other way when Bast took Aloy's first trophy, just as Bast knew he would. Oma admired his fealty to High Matriarch Lansra. If one must grow up to be a man, she said, then be a man like Resh. He wore his new position with such pride, and Bast could see this even from the ground.

Their eyes met as he stood up on the wall, speaking with another Brave. He would not share the same glance with Aloy. "Just ignore her," he even heard him say.   
  
Perhaps he would listen to him, Bast thought. Resh was stubborn, the sort who even starving to death would refuse meat if Aloy offered it, and unlike Bast, he had made no promises to her. 

A look and she knew what he was thinking. Just the same, she alighted the ladder to address Resh before Bast could insult her with the suggestion. "I need the gate opened." 

Resh huffed in distaste but did not even turn to face her. "Since when have the needs of an Outcast been any of my concern?" he demanded. Without allowing himself to see her, he could not see the mark she carried. Even if word had come down the mountain he might still plead ignorance.

"Since I was anointed a Seeker." Aloy declared this like any woman of many years of rank would. "Now open the gate." 

He had to look at her now, perhaps hoping he would see no mark and have the right to call her a liar. Even Bast was shocked to hear him call the High Matriarchs insane (all but Lansra, of course). "No wonder a curse is upon us," he spat, "and our children lie dead under cairns of stone." 

As though she'd been brought inside All Mother Mountain before the Proving was run. As though the killers hadn't been people and not machines. 

As though the murder of their brothers and sisters had been Her will. 

Bast felt his blood boil in a way he hadn't really felt since he was beaten to the finish line on the top of that mountain -- stronger, even. Because this wasn't just about a race won or lost. It was about new braves he'd grown up with, played with, trained with, danced alongside and told stories to, bested, kissed.

In a smooth motion, he picked up a stone from the dust at his feet, and his fist balled around it. 

A hand closed over his, and Vala shook her head at him in warning. Her jaw was clenched tight. If the leg of a watcher were between her teeth, they would have crushed it. 

The night before the Proving, Bast had dug into Aloy with everything he had, and she fought back blow for blow, but always, her voice was patient, unbroken. To hear it carry now, something had hurt, and he got it. He got it because Resh had said something so wrong and didn't even seem to care.

"How can you be so heartless? I fought alongside those children, shoulder to shoulder and back to back. I saw them fall!" 

He stepped up to her, furious. "If any one of them were a true Nora, they would have put an arrow in your back!" 

_If you really couldn't do better, Bast, you would have put an arrow in her when nobody would have seen you or stopped you._

Bast pulled his hand free from Vala's, and she put up no resistance, standing aside to give him room to swing. The stone flew and struck the wall just an inch shy of Resh's ear. "Don't talk about us or them like that! Don't you dare!" he roared.

Reflex called the older brave's hands toward his bow, thinking an ambush. When he beheld them, it was a moment before shock would allow him to speak, and he sputtered indignantly. "Be silent!" he snapped. "I am your War Chief --" 

There was only an instant of Bast acknowledging that Aloy had begun to speak, and even Aloy stopped, because Vala exploded. 

**" _SONA_ IS MY WAR CHIEF."**

Even as she stepped ahead of him, her voice boomed with such force that he thought for certain she would alight to the wall in a single leap and crush Resh where he stood. It stole all the fight out of Bast's bones, like one predator submitting to another when it takes ownership of an intended kill. 

Even the tears standing in her eyes, only now, could not make Bast doubt that she would fight and win if further provoked. If Vala were her furious seven year old self, fresh from pummeling a thoughtless young Bast for pushing her down, Resh still would not have stood a chance. Only War Chief Sona, just as she had back then, could have pulled her away.

No one in the Watch could decide if her outburst was righteous or a form of blasphemy. 

Vala mastered herself, and she did not look to Bast, or Aloy, or any guard around them to validate her anger. You never take your eyes off your target once you've chosen it. When she spoke again, anyone standing there could swear that it was with Sona's voice. 

"And if you disrespect the office of my mother with your insolence again, _yours_ will know before sundown that you didn't die near her." 

Her bow was out and aimed before he could finish asking if she were threatening him. 

Whether Aloy meant to block her shot or only to have her moment to assert herself, she did not move from her place. "We are your Seekers, anointed by the High Matriarchs" she said evenly. It was not a triumphant moment of alignment, that storytellers would later say was their first moment of a united front, because the only thing that bound them together other than name was that Resh had foolishly injured all three of them, and Aloy was the only one that didn't lose her temper. " _Open the gate_." 

When it was clear none of the braves present were going to draw their weapons to protect him if Vala decided her arrow wanted his heart, Resh finally relented in disgust. Better to have them out and away than here ready to fight him and remind his warriors that someone who didn't dishonor their dead might still be out there to reclaim her mantle. 

The only time Bast's opinion had ever been allowed to change so quickly was when a Nora was outcast, a fate that would never be his because he had been raised to be the best among his peers. Before Resh, it had never been so clear to him that his importance to another Nora could cease to be -- and all because he chose to take up arms against an enemy that threatened them all. Because he didn't murder someone who (he had to admit) had earned the right to stand next to him. 

Resh showed him, however briefly, what it must have felt like to be made an outcast, and that made him wish he'd put up more of a fight. 

But no one rose their voices to agree with Resh. Not even Lansra would come down from the mountain that day. So Bast and Vala were whole. They were still Seekers, and Resh would forever be War Chief in name only.

They almost didn't hear the calls of warning from Braves further along the wall. 

The terrible whirs and a distant thunder drew Bast and Vala up the ladder, even as Resh continued to hurl low accusations at Aloy. In the trees beyond the gate, there were only glances of yellow and red light penetrating, but the thunder they knew, because no brave even fresh from their Proving could mistake the sound of a strider herd stampeding. 

The black thing on spider legs, they did not expect to come over the hill, its own footsteps shaking in their bones like a hundred spears clashing. It crawled and leapt great distances, dropping a small gathering of boars like a foot crushing insects. When the Demon fell upon grazing striders, its tendrils shot red into their bodies, like a bleeding wound flowing backward, and the machines joined the rest of its army. It was everything his nightmares told him the Metal Devil could be, if only smaller (and still large enough to devour). Was this the corruption Aloy spoke of back at the top of the mountain? Was this what they sought to understand and undo?

They were all coming. This would not even be like the grazers, Bast realized. The Demon had changed them, beyond the derangement the older braves spoke of, and if they did not stop it, the machines would reach All Mother Mountain and kill everyone. 

Braves scrambled to position themselves around the gate. Aloy armed her tripcaster and threw multiple wires across the entrance, crisscrossed and stretching at multiple heights. Vala climbed atop one of the huts to fire from out of trampling range. 

Bast wished he could act more quickly, and his hands fumbled as he laid down blast traps in each of the paths he was sure the striders would take before he sought cover -- all just as the gate exploded -- great sparks of lightning, deafening bursts of fire as the striders poured in like water. The thought of the Demon's leap pulled him back behind the bonfire, just as its black shape filled the void in the gate and its great eye seemed to turn on him. Arrows pelted its outer armor like quills on a bird, unbothered as it steeled itself to jump, and Bast was certain he was dead, even as his hands moved on their own.

It was in the air by the time his shaking fingers finished and dropped the trap. Only an instant to roll, and as it came down right where he had been, the shockwave sent him rolling and scorched his bare arm. He could hear nothing but the roar of his trap triggered, not even as Vala called out his name in warning, and he came down on his back so hard it forced the wind from his lungs. 

The Demon blotted out all light as it righted itself and came toward him, its whipping tail throwing approaching braves away from its flank. Bast's face stung red with the strain to breathe, and he realized too late that he'd lost his bow. 

A sharpshot arrow struck a canister near the Demon's eye, cutting off a rising shriek he could feel in the chatter of his teeth but not hear, and the creature slumped to the side. Aloy's spear swung from one arm with inhuman strength as she tucked her bow behind her with the other, downing the abomination in a hail of sparks and dying circuitry. 

The last striders were dispatched as Bast tried to move and come to his senses, air returning. Aloy's lips were moving but the sound was far away like he was under water, and nonsense. He was trying to answer and couldn't even hear himself -- when he could it was only then that he realized he was shouting, "IS IT OVER?"

He winced as she left him to pick over the machine's corpse. 

Just as quickly, Vala was there, dropping his bow close by and quickly applying salve to his stinging arm. "Bast, that was _crazy_." 

"You're telling me?" he gasped as she yanked him to his feet.

"Did you think she'd think I was lying about the scrappers?" she asked, with half a bewildered laugh. 

She kind of had been. In reality, there had only been two when he took them out. 

And here -- he should have been reaching for his bow when it saw him, but his mind was still on making traps. He hadn't acted quickly enough, even if the maneuver had worked. "Not bad for our first day as Seekers, right?" he asked halfheartedly. 

The rain had stopped, and blue had begun to peer out of the sky. Resh was barking orders for people to tend to the wounded and get the gate repaired. Aloy, by the Demon, was kneeling close and looking at it strangely, like she could see visions in its metal entrails. A little light glowed at her temple -- Bast didn't know why he only saw it just then. Had there always been a light there? 

A component harvested from the machine became her primary concern, and with wires she lashed it to her spear. 

A trophy, perhaps. And she had a right to it; it was definitely her kill. Somehow her arrow had taken it when so many others could not even make it twitch. 

Bast and Vala joined her, neither certain what she was up to. 

"What did you find?" Vala asked. 

"If we're lucky," Aloy breathed, "then it's the way it was able to take control of the striders. Maybe it can be used. We'll see. Have to test it." 

Bast shook his head. "How can you be sure?" Finding blaze in a strider was one thing. They knew what it looked like, how the machines stored it. He couldn't tell you, though, what organ inside a strider made it run or graze. He frowned at her -- the light wasn't so bright anymore, and for once he clearly saw the smooth arrowhead near her brow. "...Is it the same way you saw where you could shoot the Demon?" 

Her eyebrows went up, impressed. "Yes, actually." 

Braves salvaging the remains of the machines now ventured nearer, certain that Aloy had taken all she wished from her kill. She waved her companions through the opening in the gate. 

Further from prying ears, Vala's question came quiet, conspiratorial, but just a repeated "How?" 

"It's better if I show you... but this is what I wanted to do before going anyway." 

No other questions were asked as they struck out from the watch at a brisk run, following the creek up into the hills and wood.

Of all the things Bast _didn't_ expect her to show them them that day, a portal to the Metal World, out in the All Mother's Embrace or all places, had to be the least likely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one wound up being a lot longer than I intended, but there are definite story notes I want to hit with each one, especially when we're addressing scenes that are clearly illustrated in the game!


	4. The Metal Longhouse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloy leads Bast and Vala into the Metal World in search of Foci.

While Bast and Vala, both, had been out in the Embrace as children and in training to be braves, like most good Nora children, they listened and left well enough alone when they were told to avoid certain places. It was not unknown to either of them that a cave leading into a piece of the metal world existed here, easily found by those who knew where to look (and easily fallen into for those that knew nothing). To an outsider that knew at least a little of their culture, they might expect Nora to react with surprise at knowing such a forbidden thing existed this close to the All Mother.

A true Nora understood that no matter where they walked or climbed, tests could be awaiting them. Those that were devout knew this cave existed and understood it was their duty to avoid straying too close to it. It was a temptation to the curious -- even those that heeded the stories, in foolish exuberance, might still thrill at a small fright.

When Aloy led them, they knew where she was taking them, though they could scarce believe it.

Bast, though wiser to keep his counsel in silence, could not help but think that somehow of _course_ Aloy would call on them to flout their laws. Though she had been outcast by no crime she consciously committed, and he knew this, the name "outcast" carried with it the universal pall of wrongdoing, whether it fit her or not.

Vala came to a similar conclusion, though it was built far less on bias. Aloy had taken the broken path, though forbidden to braves due to its danger, had conquered it, and shown herself as best among them. Of course, whatever her intent, she would bring them somewhere like this first.

Aloy was securing a rappel line to take them to the bottom of the open chasm when it finally occurred to them her full intent.

"You know the Metal World is forbidden," Bast finally said.

"It's supposed to be cursed," Vala added, though her answer was far less of an outright rejection as her companion's seemed.

"You're Seekers now," Aloy answered, terse, though she sensed her tone as she looked at them. "That means neither of those things apply to you anymore." Glancing between them. "Right?"

It was true. Given the mark of Seeker, they could go where no other Nora would dare step, and the unholy magic of these places could not harm them, but the mark was new, and these braves were new, and still the vigilant hesitation of fresh braves closed itself around their hearts protectively.

Aloy crouched close to the mouth, waiting for them to absorb, for questions.

Vala was first. "Have you...been down there before, Aloy?"

There was no need to wait to formulate her answer. She was straightforward, not at all defensive. "I fell in when I was a child, on my first day out in the Embrace. You can see the ledge just there. I missed it going down, and nobody can hear you from the bottom. I had no gear, no training. I had to try to find a way out on my own."

Cold little worms of superstition crawled through their skins. That she fell in by accident was curse enough. If she had been tainted by the experience, would she have won the Proving?

Did it bring the killers? Bast thought. He pushed it out of mind, as much as he would have grasped for this manner of confirmation before, the way Resh's words demeaned them all -- he had decided to see this through. To accuse such a thing out loud, Vala would have cut him in more ways than one.

Aloy's voice was quiet and patient. "We're doing two things before we head to the gate: I think there are some working Focuses down there -- I'll explain that in a minute. But more importantly, this is a test for you two. If you can't go in here now, it will be harder when you absolutely must. What we're hunting won't stick to the safe parts of Nora land. I have no doubt the only way to understand the corruption is for us to better understand all parts of this world. Including the bits you're afraid to touch. I will tell you that there's nothing down here that can hurt you, but that may not be the case if we have to delve in deeper places later on. Do you understand?"

Vala was the first to kneel closer to the hole, to strain her eyes to try to see the bottom. The distant, possible shimmer of water, but nothing clear in the dark, and that only meant it could be filled with anything.

Bast's face was grim. Trying to comprehend. Trying to trust because he had to, but still characteristically grudging in his own way. "You said a word. There's 'Focuses' down there."

"Yes." Aloy reached close to her temple and removed a white object, almost like a bead or a jewel. "I found this when I was down there the first time. A Focus. Many of the doors down there don't open without them. It helps you see things. Tracks. Locks. Keys. It makes animals and machines easier to detect, can even show you their weaknesses -- not so important here in the Embrace where we know all the types of machines and how to hunt them. But they aren't the only machines outside. It will help you adapt."

All of it sounded too fantastic. Too easy. The kind of easy that came with evil magic, and unseen price you had to pay eventually. But Bast's face darkened, because as she spoke, and as he believed her, so too did a blackness settle in his stomach that told him maybe this was how she won. She had help. And part of him wanted to latch onto that, to be right.

But she said it herself: it helped her see mostly things in the Machine world. Nothing in the Proving, knowing the machines already from years of study, would have been helped with that. What had been helped had been her ability to see and fight off the Killers, and that had been a boon to all of them.

Aloy finished, returning the object to its place on her head "I want you two to try learn to use them while we're travelling together."

Bast pulled back. " _No_. I'm not using Metal World magic."

Vala hesitated, her first instinct to quiet him, but she would have been a fool and a liar to say she did not at least think the same thing.

It was only now that Aloy's voice took a harder edge; for all that she had been gentle since their joining, she had clearly been ready to give Bast a fight if he came looking for one. "It's _not_ magic, Bast. It's a tool, and it's a tool that the _Killers_ have, one they will _continue_ to use to kill people and to protect themselves if we ever come for them. You can't let them have that advantage over you, and you can't claim you're here to help me and then tell me I have to be the eyes for all three of us."

Her two companions share uncertain looks, each taking to heart the harder truths there. Of course there was room for vengeance in each of them for what had been done to their brothers and sisters, and it was that flame that Aloy stoked just then.

She was offering them a weapon, and a weapon that perhaps Seekers should rightly wield.

She decided not to wait for them. "I'm going down. Join me at the bottom or wait up here. This journey's going to be a lot harder for all of us if you keep falling behind, though." She descended into the darkness below, and the two, listening, could hear a distant splash.

They didn't dive without repelling -- she would not have tied a line if it were deep enough to land in safely. But they did not stay out in the breaking sun, either.

They came down in a cavern, no metal at all, in water that came up just over their ankles. Sunlight poured down from where they came, in just barely they made out the outline of two open passages. Aloy stood in one, and her whisper was just high enough to be heard, even without echo: "Try to be quiet; there's sleeping bats down here."

The cavern with its shards of rock and fleeing flying creatures (just as she'd warned) soon rose to a small passage they had to crouch to get through, and there they beheld their first look at a piece of the metal world up close. Much of nature had broken through and reclaimed what was there, much of it in the first chamber covered over and calcified from centuries of water and salt. In some ways they could see familiar shapes. Stone or metal forms that were clearly chairs. Or tables, but so many, and their purposes unclear.

Aloy's spear had to pry at a set of doors that did not open out toward or away from them; instead the walls holding them seemed to devour them, leaving only an open way. They stopped short deeper in, the place mostly darkness, but light spilled through a doorway filled with stalactites, and she paused, as though she'd seen something their eyes could not (and they assumed she had).

Bast immediately thought that the danger she swore would not be there, had simply laid in wait for mature prey. "What is it?"

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "I think I can break away the rocks, but I couldn't get in when I was little. Stand back."

"Is it a machine?" Vala asked, reaching for a weapon.

"No. Not an enemy anyway." Aloy took a hard swing with her spear that cut through the barrier like it was made of long grass.

Inside, a beam of sunlight poured in from above. The floor in the chamber was covered over in moss, but most peculiar of all: a garden of purple flowers, growing in a perfect triangle, and in the center stood _something_ metal. Even a machine, but rather than attack, it -- _bloomed_. Like a flower itself.

For a moment, her two companions were entranced.

"What's it...for?" Bast felt immediately ashamed he thought it might be dangerous.

Aloy crept nearer to it to examine it more closely. "I don't know. Maybe just to look pretty. I found one of these the night before the Proving, when Rost -- " She stopped, kept the rest of that thought to herself, found a new one. "There was no time to really look it over then. A lot darker out too." And just looking at it, seemingly with no really special look, no indication to suggest she could see anything they couldn't, she added. "There's words in it."

"What do you mean there's _words_ in it?" Bast shook his head. "It's just a flower." Well, it was more than just a flower, being made of metal, but his meaning was clear.

"Believe me, I know how strange that sounds. But it's like somebody wrote in it. Like the Oseram and the Carja write things, to help them remember: _Light of the moon moves west; flowers' shadows creep eastward_." Her brows knit together in confusion, and she looked to them.

There was nothing familiar about it to anyone present. Vala shrugged. "Maybe it's a riddle. Maybe it's nothing. Are there Focuses in here?"

"It doesn't look like it, but I know where we're likely to find them."

Their conversation, though soft, was enough to startle another swarm of bats that they had to duck, but she led them up a set of stairs, then another, through strange frozen rooms like many cabin homes stitched together with ice. She warned them there would be bodies here, but that most of them have been covered over so long you can barely make out the shape of them.

The first body was haloed in sunlight the same way the metal flower had been, their limbs twisted about them in a cold, final agony, the remains of their teeth jagged just like the stalactites. Part of the hunter in Vala wanted to know what had caused their passing and tried to make out telltale signs even in this state of decay, but this was not the way Nora braves found bodies -- corpses were buried. If you found one, it was usually fresh. There had been little enough time passed to make out injuries.

Here she might as well have been trying to read leaves like those Carja did.

The first Focus that they found was on another body, this one encased in salt and stone, arrested on what appeared to be a metal bed of some sort, in a lone, smaller cabin in this much larger one. Aloy had to use her tools to chisel through it gently, but soon she was fishing out the remains of a white triangle just like her own, which she removed, holding them up to each other like it was their first meeting. Her hand motions in the air made no sense to them, but they had to assume it meant something.

When she had finished, she replaced her own Focus and held the new one for the other two to see. "There's a door up ahead that I can lock and unlock, and I want you two to take turns figuring it out." She showed them to a chamber off from the door she'd chosen. There were boxes on the walls. One, she said, was the lock. The other, to its side, a guide.

"When you put this on, the guide will show you the way you need to turn the lock to make it work."

Aloy did not wait for a volunteer. She chose Vala to go first and showed her how to put the Focus on.

"When you focus on an object, it will scan it. See the door? How the circle is red? See how it's connected to the lock?"

Vala was speechless for a moment, and in the dark, Bast waited, uncertain, but reassured when Vala recovered and sprung into action.

"What's it like, Vala?" he asked -- horrified but still impatient, still curious.

She sounded a little breathless, awestruck. "It's like starlight. Everywhere." Her hand reached toward the 'lock' -- and she jerked back, feeling and seeing and hearing what he could not. A moment analyzing, marveling at the world awakened around her, and she turned to Aloy, nodding. "I think I understand it."

She had the circle on the door changing colors in the work of a moment, and while Aloy reset it, she hesitantly removed the Focus to offer to Bast. "It's easy once you're over the shock. Come on, try it."

Bast, for his part, refused to be too excited. It wasn't about the desire to play with technology; even as a child he was always eager to learn new tricks with his tools, to be the first to try a new weapon. Here it was much the same, but his anticipation, even with what Vala said about lights, could not prepare him for how this gray, dead, stony world changed. He saw the lights. He saw the circles, and the symbols in the guide and how they matched the lock.

At first, he saw the bits of color around Aloy's temple and knew the same must also exist around his own while he wore this. He spied the glowing, skittering shapes of rats in the halls, searching for vegetation to feast on. He saw moving lights somewhere in the distance, beyond wall and earth and rock, and realized the shapes he was seeing were the skeletons of living striders up on the surface.

This was what Aloy looked at every day, and for just a moment, he could not comprehend this being an advantage to anyone, much less a means to cheat at anything, just because there was so much. How did you stop from getting confused at it all?

She reminded him of the lock. More embarrassed at his own distraction, he shot an annoyed look at her then set to work. His hand turned the lock in the wrong direction, and he immediately pulled back. "...I messed it up," he mumbled, more to himself. "How do I start over?"

"You don't have to. Keep moving it in that direction and it'll come around to the right spot. Don't give up."

The last bit wasn't needed, but he didn't object, following her direction and guiding the lock into the correct place. The ring on the door changed color, and his heart skipped a beat. "Are all the metal world doors like this?" he asked.

Aloy, who had thus far been forthcoming and quick to answer their questions, was not, this one time. "Some are," she said finally. Bast had other questions -- whether there were other Metal World ruins in the Embrace they just didn't know about -- whether she'd explored any others. Her quiet said there might be, but he had the good sense not to press.

Even one ruin in the Embrace, and knowing about it, even without seeing all of this was hidden inside, was more than a younger Bast would cared to think about at length, outside of a cautionary tale.

For fairness' sake to Vala, he took the Focus off again until they could find a third, but removing it was like going blind, his eyes having to readjust to the dark again without the new lights. It wasn't long before they came across more: the chamber had many beds, bunked ones even, and Aloy said she thought it might have been a longhouse once.

Soon they were both outfitted and could see the glows around the bodies, the lights around unclaimed Foci. "If you let the Focus scan them, it'll show you memories, or let you hear them. Their last words, when these people were dying, but it's...sad."

Now they were too nervous to look directly at any of the bodies. Both knew of the Nora, Brom. That he heard the voices of spirits -- was that like this?

Aloy sensed their hesitation, trying to explain. "It's like writings. Some of them are. But others it's like, the Focus can save a voice. Or even a picture of a person talking. This was a ... brave outpost, of some kind. I think. They were trapped here. I can't figure out why. Their healers gave them medicine so they could die peacefully. If one starts playing and you want it to stop, just tap for Focus with your finger."

Vala was the first to be brave, and her finger hovered near her temple the entire time. Bast watched her face, half certain that the agony of the old ones were flooding into her ears. She looked only -- well, sad. As Aloy had described it. "This one's...singing."

Were any of their mothers close by? Vala wondered. Or their own children? Did any of these people's children take their last breaths far away from here?

They were raised on the stories of how the machines and the Metal Devil were the destruction from those that didn't turn away from temptation and ruin. It would have been so much easier to hear people spitting at their misfortune. Insisting that they wanted and deserved more. Furious at the machines' refusal to obey.

It would have been so much easier if they didn't sound like people they could easily know.

It was when Vala turned to Aloy, her voice bleeding with hurt when she spoke, that Bast decided he wouldn't scan one for himself: "You were a little girl when you found this, Aloy. Did you listen to all of them, too?"

Aloy could only offer a sad nod. "I wanted to know what happened to them, but I couldn't find any real answers before Rost found me. I don't think there's enough _left_ for there to be any answers, and we can look more another time maybe."

The metal longhouse, like the tomb it was, just seemed to feel even colder around all of them.

"The way out is this way," she offered. "Let's go topside and warm up, and I can show you more of what the Focuses can do."

Aloy hurried ahead of them, perhaps just as eager to get out, but her companions were in a far different state of mind. Vala even scanned a couple more before she would come ahead -- no matter how unfortunate they sounded, but Aloy told the truth when she said there were no answers.

Why did none of them mention the Metal Devil, if they were out of the same time?

"Vala?" Bast hung back to watch her, but every time his Focus started to scan a body, even by accident, he clicked it off. "Are you going to be all right? You should stop looking."

"Even without a curse on this place, I can see why people shouldn't come down here," she answered. "I feel like we're looking at something...broken. A murder done but you can't find who did it. No mothers to find to remember names. And you just have to leave it undone."

"We know the stories."

"I know. But if that laid it all to rest then it wouldn't be real." Vala pushed past him, turning the corner Aloy had taken, seeing light ahead. She wanted to see sky. She needed it.

Bast thought briefly of trying. Scanning just one and listening, because he didn't understand everything she was talking about. He wanted to.

In the silence, though, truly alone in that room with all the old ones, as Aloy had been when she was a child, he thought of bodies he had seen in his life before. Holding his mother's hand after she had passed came first, but it was the thought of the fallen braves after the proving, and this chamber -- a cold reflection and reversal of the empty longhouse they'd slept in, this one full but full of the never waking.

Bast knew he didn't want to feel like this for even another second. He gave chase, grateful for handholds, the smell of grass, and at last: sun.

They hadn't even left the Embrace yet; they'd merely gone under it, and not for very long. What would it feel like when they'd gone from here for months? Possibly years? Bast was certain he might probably weep when that happened. Already, part of him wished family bad been passing by -- not singing up on the mountain.

He wanted to see his grandmother again. He wanted to talk to any of those braves one more time.

Bast and Vala both thought of their mothers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in getting this one up, and thank you to everyone who's written such thoughtful comments! I decided to do something a little different for this one and let the narrator into two heads this time instead of just one. I hope it worked.


	5. Abandoned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trio splits up for some final preparations. Aloy, craving a few moments alone, travels to Rost's grave, not expecting for Bast to follow her.

Coming out of the cave, Aloy made a decision. Seeing the shaken, uncomfortable faces of her two companions, she felt resolute that she needed to show them this piece of the metal world, find them their focuses, or it would be that much harder to move forward. Now, she was giving them time: to prepare themselves, perhaps even one last chance to change their minds. 

But she needed time, too, she realized.

"Vala, you said your brother was stationed out at the gate, right?"

Vala, still quiet and sullen: "Yeah."

"Scout on ahead and camp near there. I'm sure he'd like to see you, and then you'll have some time alone with him before we have to go. Bast, if you want a little more time with your family, tonight's it. I'm...going to test that machine piece I took from the Corruptor." After she goes up the mountain, she thinks. After she says goodbye to Rost. She swallowed. "We'll meet at the gate at dawn and set out from there." 

If either of them wanted to argue, they didn't show it, but then perhaps the cave took some of the fight out of them. She didn't mind the idea of giving them until morning to build it back up. 

Vala set off right away, her legs carrying her through the brush and into the trees and fields beyond. 

Bast did not, his brow knitted with indecision, shuffling on his feet.

Aloy didn't rush him -- let him take his own time, she thought, and turned to make her way toward Rost's mountain. 

She'd crossed the creek and into the hills again by the time she realized Bast was not merely heading in a similar direction, but following her. The place she stopped in was quiet -- likely cleared of scrappers and watchers by braves earlier in the day, or maybe the corruptor's movement through the region had disrupted them. It was safe to speak.

"Is something wrong?" 

Bast hung back, tightjawed. 

Aloy sighed. "Why are you following me?"

She half expected him to deny it, just to be contentious, but as little as she knew him, she had seen the change in him since the Proving. If it confused her, it must have been the same for him, because he clearly wrestled with it. 

"I don't want to make saying goodbye harder than it already was," he admitted, then closed the distance between them. "If I go back even for tonight, they'll think I've come back for good, and then I'll just have to tell them no again." 

Especially that old woman who grieved his decision to join her like it was his own death. 

Aloy nodded, and he didn't have to explain he probably agreed with her about Vala having time alone with her brother. But she also wanted to be alone. She wanted a little time to be like she was before the Proving. For a moment, she thought that meant  _ alone,  _ but Rost had always been there. Perhaps silent. Letting her learn some lessons on her own, just with someone to watch her. But if she asked questions, he would answer. If she called out to him, he would appear if he heard her. 

Never again.

The times he had been silent, but near, he had been preparing her, hadn't he? For when she would be a Brave and he would be Outcast, and he would never speak to her again. Perhaps avoid her, but she would find him. 

Well, now she knew exactly where to look, and part of her didn't much relish bringing Bast up to  _ his  _ place. 

"I'm taking a small detour. Do you see that smoke, up ahead?" She pointed to the east. The billows of a campfire on the upper parts of the trail ahead, above the rocks, could be seen. 

He nodded. 

"Meet me there in an hour. If you want something to do --" She pointed to another campfire smoke, due north of them. "Odd Grata lives on the bluff there. She won't talk to you; she just talks to All Mother. But she's very old and can't do a lot of hunting on her own. I'd usually bring her rabbits, but … I'm not going to be able to do much of that anymore. So --"

"Find her some meat," he said shortly. He looked neither excited nor offended at the task. "I can do that." 

She sighed, relieved. "It'll give you a chance to play with the focus. Like I said, the animals glow when you turn it on." 

"I know. I saw the rats."  

"Right." 

Someday these two would know what to do with each other without constantly feeling like they were steeled to argue and insult. It would not be today. 

"Thank you," she added finally. "For helping Odd Grata. One hour, I'll be back. And be nice to her." 

She didn't stay around to argue with him.

Climbing back up the mountain took the better part of the hour, not so much following the trail, the patch of land his cabin sat on had an expanse of sheer cliffside between it and the rest of the earth. She knew she could zip down quickly, though, and didn't expect she'd be long. It was in itself comforting, turning the climb into a series of mindless tasks, a point to reach ahead of her. 

She didn't have to think while she climbed, except where her hands and feet would go, when to leap. 

Especially when it was a climb she had been doing since she was a child. 

Part of her, very fleetingly, wished Bast had followed her the rest of the way. It was but a split second, where she thought the sound of someone climbing up behind her, from below, might feel comforting and normal. Like when Rost would take up the rear in her earlier climbs all those years ago, ready to snatch her out of the air if she slipped. 

For the better when she got to the top, picked her way to the stream, and ultimately found a place with flowers and a grave marker. For just a minute, she turned away, just to see what he could see, and Teersa had directed his burial perfectly. The view, just beyond a scraggle of brush, reached out into the valley below, and in the far distance, on a clear day, Mother's Heart still beat with life. 

Aloy knew how often Rost would come out here just to look, how much he missed the people and loved this land. If there had been no attack, would he have come out here in the mornings, looked out there, and missed her? If she'd strayed from his directions to sneak up here to see him, would he look and feel disappointed, knowing she wasn't there when she should be? 

Well, now she'd just as likely not set foot in there ever again. For different reasons. 

"Rost?" she turned back to the grave. 

Her fingers stroked the amulet he'd given her, thoughtful. She had a piece of him; it seemed only fitting she leave something too, right? She came to kneel close by, reaching up into her hair to unloop a bead and lay it in front of the stone. 

Blue and shining metal, sunlight caught in it and as she blinked, she felt herself clearing her throat over a painful lump there. 

"When you said goodbye," she breathed, "I was too quick to let you go." What would it have been like, if she fought him? If she let herself get angry. Insisted she would find him. Would he have relented? Just as likely not. "I never thought it'd be the very last time I saw you." And it would hurt that much more if she'd shouted. Hurt if she insisted she would find him and see him again. "I was just acting strong." 

But he was, too. 

Rost never scolded her for crying, but she really didn't do it often since she was a child. Too focused on her goal, too determined to be strong. But now she was a brave. Now, she had finished first and earned a boon from the Matriarchs. 

She had everything she'd spent a decade working for. 

And now she was alone -- truly alone -- and she had no incentive to stop her tears now. The rush of passing water and the rustle of the trees were her only answer, but she was grateful. When she went back down, she needed to have all of this out of her. She felt herself slip once or twice with the others. Where she almost talked about Rost and stopped. Stopped because she didn't want to invite Bast to judge him. Because it hurt too much to talk about him in terms of what he  _ was  _ as opposed to what he  _ is.  _

So she did not mark how far the sun moved by the time her eyes were finally dry and her throat could no longer scream.

The glyph on Rost's grave stone still watched her when she looked up again. She did not apologize, and he did not ask, but she didn't think of time or other promises, stealing a few last minutes with words.

"The killers at the Proving sent a machine to kill the Nora," she said. Her voice was forcibly steady. If she could muster herself here, she would be fine when the story was done. "It corrupted the other machines in the valley, made them go insane and attack, but I --  _ we _ stopped it." 

She was going to have to get used to that. 

So she spoke. Because things always felt easier to manage, when she talked about them out loud, even just to herself. 

"I've been made a Seeker, and so have two other braves I met at the Proving. Vala and Bast. They told me they owed me a life debt for what happened up there, so they will come with me." 

She carried on, gentle, telling him all about the War Chief's fierce and friendly daughter, and Bast -- the boy who threw the stone at her on her first day out in the Embrace with Rost. Grown, with still more growing to do, but he is making an effort she can scarce believe. Unsaid, but really, she wished she could introduce him to both of them. Maybe they'd owe him, too. Maybe his rescue at the Proving would have made him Outcast no more. 

But that wasn't all. And she knew she'd cry again if she focused on what-ifs.

"So much of this is connected. The killers -- they came because I look like someone. I think it's my mother -- she  _ looks  _ like me. I saw her, Rost -- I  _ saw  _ my mother. In All Mother mountain, too. But there's something wrong. There's corruption in the machines, and there's some kind of corruption stopping me from entering All Mother, too. Teersa thinks it may be connected, and the only answers I'm going to find will be beyond the Embrace."

The wind caught her just right to send a chill through her. A dusting of snow threw itself from the stones. She wished he could answer her, that he might have some knowledge she didn't have, something to make her feel a little more confident moving forward.

Would he have answered her, if he were alive? Would he have had anything he could say that would help? 

"I have to go down now. I'll come back soon." 

She thought of saying goodbye. But she wouldn't do it when he left her at Mother's Heart. She couldn't do it now, because she would come back. 

She stood and turned away -- not expecting to find Bast standing behind her. 

To his credit, he had the look of someone who knew they'd just intruded on something private, but he didn't yet have it in him to apologize. 

"You were taking a long time. I already found food for that old outcast, but I saw you climb up this way and thought I should come --"

He was worried about her. As much as he could be, at any rate. They had no deep love for one another. But his thought wasn't to go on without her. He also didn't come up and set to harping at her for being late. 

You can learn a lot about anyone, whether it's a person or an animal or a machine, based on what they do when they're silent. Rost told her that. 

Bast let her have her moment. Several. More than she probably needed, really. 

Bast proved that, shocking as she knew it would be, he  _ could  _ shut up. And he was much the better for it. 

Aloy pushed the heel of her hand against her eye to dry it. "I didn't mean to take as long as I did. But thank you." 

"Is he the man from the Proving?"

She couldn't help but feel taken aback. Like he didn't have the right to ask that, but she guessed Bast saw him before he and Vala escaped. 

"His name's Rost," she answered, stepping back and allowing him to come nearer if he wanted to look at the stone.

Bast did, with that same look on his face, like he had questions he was too stubborn not to answer himself, even lacking answers. "You lived with him here, didn't you?"

"He raised me. Named me. Taught me to walk and talk, to hunt."

"That's unusual, you know." To his credit, this came with none of the snark she knew him for. He didn't sneer. He wasn't trying to remind her of a place that was no longer hers to occupy. "You do know it is, right?"

"What is? That he raised me?"

"Outcasts aren't allowed to talk to each other, I thought."

Oh, that. Her expression flattened, and she motioned for him to follow her. It would be dusk, soon, and Rost's cabin would serve well enough as shelter for them -- it wasn't his anymore, but at least she could sleep one more night with the smell of him around her. 

"...He told me. But the Matriarchs made an exception for him."

The no talking rule never really impressed itself upon her. She still spoke to Odd Grata. The only reason she avoided speaking to Nora in the valley is because while most would politely ignore her, you still had people like Bast who'd respond with violence. 

"Because you don't have a mother."

Aloy rolled her eyes. "I  _ have _ a mother, Bast." She waved him along. "Come on, we'll test the override tomorrow when we head for the gate."

He had a right to look surprised, she supposed. She had been disparaged for not having a mother her entire life; even she accepted this as some kind of semi-truth until she saw the woman's face herself, in the focus. Of course she didn't believe the nonsense that the devil made her, or even Teersa's genuine belief that the mountain was her mother. But what would a Nora believe, finding a baby abandoned and the one that birthed her nowhere to be found?

They came down to the campfire, and it didn't take long to get it roaring. Aloy took a branch to carry some of it to the fireplace in the cabin. The brave followed her, either uncertain what to ask or patiently waiting for her to carry on of her own accord. 

"Turn on your Focus and I'll show you."

She showed him the intel she got from the killer's focus, the image of herself and the strange woman. The numbers at the bottom. DNA Match. None of which, of course, he could read, but the resemblance was unmistakable. 

Bast reached out, startled when his fingers passed through the image. "Who is she?"

"I don't know, but this image was sent to the killers with orders to find me and -- well, you were there." 

Since not many people just talked to Aloy before, she had learned to read body language and reserve her judgments based on that. Bast seemed...almost excited, to hear the news. He shifted where he sat down, like he'd like to get up and pace around. Mention of the killers was enough to darken his mood, but it took him a few seconds blinking uncomfortably at the lights and functions of the focus that his movements set off before remembering he could deactivate it. 

"If any of the Nora could see this then there would have been no reason for you to be outcast in the first place."

"Not that any of them would willingly put one of these on. We're the only Seekers I know of, after all." 

He deflated a little.

Aloy smiled. Honestly, she was just pleased that he didn't decide it was her fault the killers attacked, for existing. Resh probably would. "Listen," she said. "It's all right. I never should have been outcast in the first place, and … maybe Rost shouldn't have been either. I don't know." 

"He never told you why he was outcast?"

She shook her head. "He said he was sworn never to speak of it. Teersa hesitated too. But Nora braves are still polite to him. He said some people earn great respect before they're outcast. So he must have been good." 

"But it was permanent, right?"

She shrugged. "He never told me anything that made me think he'd ever stop being outcast." 

Bast frowned. "It doesn't make sense. People aren't permanently outcast unless they do something really terrible."

"Or your mother abandons you as a baby." Aloy glowered. "Casting people out, in itself, doesn't make sense, Bast." 

In fairness, she was the one who started this, so when his eyes lit up with reproach, she accepted it with more patience and less readiness to do battle as she would have otherwise. "Yes, it does," he argued. "You just don't understand because you haven't been Nora all your life." 

She sighed. "I know that I have never met one person that deserved to be left alone out in the wild, with no one to talk to or help them. Rost was faithful. He followed every law, and he died protecting the people and the land that he loved, and none of you would even  _ talk _ to him." She bit her lip, adding with perhaps a little bite, "and I am  _ not  _ ignorant." 

He guffawed but didn't press further. 

She ignored him, setting about the cabin and securing little things. Pocketing what she could use. Finding space places for special objects. Projects Rost had been working on. A knife that would never be sharpened. Bits of armor that would never come together. 

She took down some of the meat that had been hung to dry so they could make a dinner of it. 

When the air had finally gone out of him, Bast spoke again. "So you don't know why the killers hate your mother?"

"Not a clue."

"Well, if they don't like her, she couldn't be all that bad." He blessedly had the self-awareness to realize he had  _ just  _ said this after establishing Aloy had probably been abandoned. "Maybe she thought they wouldn't find you here." 

And if she hadn't talked to Olin, maybe they wouldn't have. 

"Or maybe she just left me."

He started to agree with her, but he winced. Before she could think to ask why, he had moved on. "...So you were saying earlier, if we find out what's causing this corruption, we might find her?"

She didn't want to say yes -- that she hoped especially that her mother would somehow be waiting for her inside the mountain. Waiting for someone to unlock the door. Saying it out loud meant she was hoping. And she was. But she thought she could fool herself. "Maybe." 

She finished cutting the meat at Rost's work table, then handed some down to Bast. 

He savored a few bites, pensive. "Well." He didn't finish that thought through several long moments. "Then I want to do that. Even if she did something wrong, you could get answers, right?" 

"That's what I'm hoping for. Right now I'd just settle for a name."

Bast nodded. "A name's good. Answers good. So let's do that." 

She smiled. "Thanks. ...Also for following me. I didn't plan on sleeping up here, but it would have been harder to do alone." Even if he behaved like a giant zit at the Proving. 

For a minute he watched her, like he was meant to say something more. Maybe even apologize. Maybe agree that this felt...better. But he was definitely the sort to preen, especially when he was pretending not to feel bothered. 

They ate in silence. Aloy stoked the fire and asked him a little about hunting with the focus. He agreed tracking rabbits was a lot simpler. He'd never taken one with a bow and arrow before, just traps, he said. She explained how he could scan machines to find weak spots -- like the blaze canister would light up especially bright. He asked about the glyphs. ...A lesson for another day. 

Definitely another day.

After all, Vala was down in the valley learning about all these things on her own, if she was even using the Focus. They settled into darkness against the warmth of the fire, two Seekers with equally as much in common and contrast. 

Another seeker far below, sat up late to keep vigil with her big brother until sleep finally took her. Her brother kept his eyes on movement in the dark, listening, waiting, hoping the next shape to break the horizon would not be another sawtooth or another wave of striders, but his mother's hunting party returning home victorious. 

The wild beyond did not answer by the time sunlight broke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am very sorry for the long delay in getting this out. I was suddenly very busy and poor and very stressed about both things. I promise these are still coming! 
> 
> As requested: a chapter finally from Aloy's perspective. There's some things I wanted to delve into that I felt were too soon (and therefore there's some cut bits of dialogue that will probably come up in later chapters). 
> 
> I continue to wrestle with Bast's voice about as much as he's wrestling with himself. My main aim with him is for him to be firmly in camp "Putting in an Effort" but he still has a lot of harmful shit to unlearn. I hope that's coming off correctly and consistently, but I also feel like it'd be natural at this point for him to be a little more back-and-forth about it.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope to have more chapters out to you soon! This originally started as a much longer piece with multiple scenes, but I realized it would be stronger overall if I worked it into one complete scene with a clear beginning and end rather than a bunch of map points strung together.


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